A Curse Between Us
by ignitesthestars
Summary: Theirs is a delicate balance. They work because they are eternal, and there is only two of them. But nothing is static. After centuries of ruling side by side, something happens to shake the careful harmony Alina and the Darkling have created for themselves.
1. Chapter 1

**i.**

"Something is on your mind."

The Darkling's voice whispers across the back of her neck. Standing in front of her mirror, Alina watches his hands curl possessively around her waist, feels him tug her back against his chest.

She thinks, for a moment, about resisting. Sometimes she even does it, pulling from his grasp, ripping away. Sometimes he drags her back, and their fights shake their wing of the Grand Palace. Other times, he lets her go.

And it is worse.

Alina blinks, and the thought is gone. She relaxes into her husband's hold, closing her eyes.

Something is on her mind. Better to keep her temper, so she can keep it to herself.

"I would be a terrible queen if there wasn't."

She murmurs it, and a quiet, distant part of her marvels at how easily the evasion comes. She had been a terrible liar, once. The words _apt pupil_ drift across her mind, as his lips skate over the bare skin of her throat.

"Something else. Something different."

Alina tilts her head, making herself vulnerable. It has been centuries, and she is no longer his student. To make herself vulnerable to Aleksander Morozova, with his strength and his wisdom and his experience, is to own him.

"A memory," she lies, and feels him stiffen. Her husband doesn't approve of her remembering things, not unless they have to do with him. It's an easily pressed button, and so she refrains from using it unless she absolutely has to. She'd hate for it to lose its effectiveness.

The hands on her waist tighten, digging into her flesh. It's no surprise when he spins her around, the weight of his body pushing her into her dresser, but she sucks in her breath anyway. Expected or not, there's no denying the hot slick of desire that spreads through her at the hard press of his body.

"Then allow me to help you forget," he breathes into her ear, and her fingers curl into the wood she is braced against.

She can't say no. She doesn't want to. She denies him nothing, that night, and if she really had been remembering something, she's sure the thoughts would have fled from her mind.

But it's not the past that haunts Alina. When the _tsar_ wakes up the next morning, he finds himself without a _tsaritsa._

It is the future she must fear, now.

**ii.**

It doesn't take him long to find her.

"Come back."

There's no expresses no surprise about how he found her, or even dismay, and he doesn't ask why she left. It's superfluous, unimportant information to the both of them. At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is that he wants her back, and she does not want to go.

"I can't," she says simply.

"_Alina_." His voice is low, dangerous, and she smiles at him. It's been a long time since he last spoke to her like that, since real fear forced real anger into his voice.

"You've gotten comfortable, Aleksander," she says lightly, and enjoys the play of muscle in his jaw as it clenches.

"Is that what this is? A lesson, to teach me to appreciate you?"

"No one has loved me like you have."

Satisfaction flickers across his features, before that anger eats away at it.

"Then why did I wake up without you in our bed? Gone from our palace, from our city?"

Alina sighs. She's in the woods, seated on the ground, back pressed to a tree. It's been lifetimes since she slept somewhere without a bed, but she finds that her body remembers, even if her husband has done his level best to have her mind forget.

"Because." She pushes herself to her feet, watches him watch her as she approaches, the naked longing on his face that swamps all else. Something in her aches, does battle with her own sense of satisfaction at the knowledge that she has left him, that not every part of her has been consumed by this man.

His eyes close as her hand brushes his cheek, thumb sliding over the scar there.

"You love me too much to bear this," she murmurs. "And I don't love you enough to stop it."

His eyes snap open. Confusion, she sees, and then a rage - a hatred - so ancient and powerful, Alina thinks they had both thought it lost before now. Before she can think, her hands are moving, swinging down and away in the familiar slice of the Cut.

He disappears. Alina can't tell if she's relieved, or horrified.

**iii.**

He visits daily, until she reminds him that he has a country to run.

"I might say the same to you." His voice is acid, and she lets it wash over her.

"Maybe you love Ravka more than I do."

She won't be able to keep it from him forever, and she doesn't really hope to. She just needs to put enough distance between them, needs to confuse her trail and lose herself in any number of nameless villages. Probably she should leave the country, but if he loves Ravka more than her, that doesn't mean she doesn't love it at all.

Alina has poured her heart and soul and more years than most people can imagine into Ravka. She can't leave it, even if staying might serve to tear it apart all over again.

"I care for much more than you do, it seems."

She sighs. "Get back to work, Aleksander. If I see you before three days, I won't be happy."

_You might make me a better man_. Alina muses over those words as she tramps through forest, and wonders if it counts, that he listens to her now.

She thinks about her throne, so easily abandoned, and wonders if he only listens because she has become more the monster.

**iv.**

She's settled in a quiet hamlet before he understands. A couple of women have been giving her knowing looks, some tinged with disapproval, others with understanding.

She is starting to show. And some new (or old, buried) part of her lets her husband get close enough to tell. The sentimentality surprises her, the sudden, sharp need for comfort, for gentleness and caring. It gets the better of her.

His movements are hesitant as he reaches for her, wary of her Cut. But as his fingers brush her wrist and find no resistance, a new demon possesses him. Small bones grind against each other from the strength of his grip as he tugs her to him, like if he pulls hard enough, she will return to Os Alta.

Alina watches it hit him, taking some small pleasure in this artificial closeness while she can. _Something is wrong_, says the way his eyes narrow. _What is it?_ murmurs the tilt of his jaw. He pulls back, and the hiss as one hand grazes her abdomen tells her that he knows.

"No." The word is a growl. "_Alina._"

In his grasp, her name contains multitudes. First and foremost, is betrayal.

And then his eyes dart to her surroundings, taking in the architecture, the window, the church that can be seen through it. Alina curses, tearing one hand from his even as the other performs the Cut.

"I'm not sorry," she whispers to the empty air.

It doesn't respond. Ruthlessly, Alina clamps down on their connection, and begins to pack.

**v.**

The midwives tell her that she had an easy birth. Alina considers tearing the midwives in half and asking if that was easy for them, but ultimately refrains.

She is a simple peasant girl done wrong, just another Alina amongst the hordes named for the _tsaritsa_.

"You look exhausted."

His voice is quiet. Alina says nothing as the women of the village chatter around her, cutting cords and swaddling and all those things that she should care about in this moment. Someone asks her if she wants to hold the baby, but her gaze remains fixed on the shadowy corner where her husband stands, looking like he can't decide if he wants to kiss or kill her.

It is not her own life she worries for.

Whispers drift towards her, something about 'strange girl' and 'just in shock' and 'going to need checking up on', but her gaze remains riveted to the Darkling as he approaches.

"I thought you weren't due for a week."

She snorts; she can't help herself. She hadn't told him, of course. He'd picked a date and done the math, like the obsessive, egotistical man he is. She doesn't plan on speaking, but even if she did, there's no way she would tell him he was right.

There are ways of inducing these things, especially when you are a centuries old Grisha. Alina hadn't wanted him to be there.

The whispers rise, nervous glances becoming concerned stares, pinning her in place. She ignores them, and her husband steps closer, his face a blank slate wiped clear of any human emotion. Something strange flutters in her gut, and it has been so long since she last experienced this feeling that it takes a few laboured breaths to put a name to it.

_Fear_.

The word startles her so much that she forgets herself, puffs out a laugh. How many years since she has feared this man? Alina can't put a name to the number. He stops in his tracks, bare inches from her bed, and she lifts her chin defiantly, smirking up at him. When it comes to the Darkling, the best offence is a well laid trap; the best defence is a good offence.

She's barely aware of the women shifting her body, pulling her upright, moving her arms. It's only when she feels a faint, warm weight settling against her that she realises something momentous has happened, right underneath her nose.

"It is a boy," a midwife informs her, and she pulls her gaze away from her husband to meet the bleary, grey eyes of her son.

Alina gasps, the sob tearing itself from her chest. Her whole body shudders from the force of it, and she clutches the tiny creature in her arms to her body, like she's terrified he will be ripped from her as well. _Fear_, she thinks dizzily, as seven months of it boils up from somewhere deep inside her, threatening to take her over.

"Shh, shh." Another of the women is making soothing noises, and a gentle hand strokes her sweat-slicked hair back off her forehead. "It's a hard road, dear, but you have survived the first steps. You will survive the rest."

Her cheeks are wet. They think she is young, a lost lamb of a girl. She is older than their grandmothers, but looking down into the screwed-up, red face of her son, that second part might not be too far off the mark.

He doesn't even cry. A beat passes, two, before Alina remembers how to breathe properly and looks over to the women. "Is he - well?"

"Disgustingly healthy, considering the turn he gave us," one of them grouses. "I imagine he's far too pleased with himself to fuss much for the time being."

Alina's facial muscles stretch, and it takes her a moment to realise that she's grinning, the expression tired and pathetic and actually, genuinely happy.

"Good." Like a magnet, she finds herself drawn back to his tiny, perfect face. Well - it's squished, a little, and the residue of bodily fluids she'd rather not think about is still present, but that doesn't make him any less perfect.

It's the hollow ache in the centre of this strange and new joy that jogs her memory, forces her to look up and to the corner. Her grin twists into a wry smirk at the sight of the empty space, and as that hollow chews itself wider, Alina knows that she made the right decision.

"Do you have a name for him?" The midwife who speaks is the one who assured her she had an easy birth. Alina has _almost_ forgiven her for that.

Her face tips up to the ceiling, and the faces of a hundred worthy companions tumble through her mind, reaching all the way back to a prince with a tongue as sharp as his mind, and a tracker with eyes as warm as his heart.

"Isaak," she says finally.

She has never known anyone called Isaak.

* * *

><p><em>AN: when i write my autobiography, it's going to be called 'this was supposed to be a one shot what happened'_

**_Important:_**_if you have a question that you want to ask me, please provide me with a way of getting back to you! It's super frustrating to get anonymous reviews that are full of questions I can't answer. This isn't to say that I don't super appreciate all the reviews I get (I do! You guys are fantastic!), but when you give me these questions I want to be able to respond to you instead of leaving you hanging._


	2. Chapter 2

**i.**

Isaak's mother has always been strange.

It's a thought without resentment; Alina Morevna knows that she is unusual, and is unconcerned with the label. There are seven Alinas in their village, but she is the only one raising a son on her own. She is the only one able to meet insults with an unbothered, unblinking gaze. She is the only one who is sometimes caught talking to herself, or staring off at things no one else can see.

Some of the children seem to think he should be ashamed of his mother. Isaak thinks that some of the children are idiots, and doesn't hesitate in telling them that to their faces. It earns him a fist to the face sometimes, but Isaak knows how to take a punch. The first time he'd gotten into a fight, his mother had taken him home and curled his fingers into a fist for him, guiding his arm through the proper motion to throw one back.

"Never hit first." His mother's voice is warm for him like it never is for any other person. She speaks, and he imagines the sun, an early summer's day before everything gets sticky and miserable. "But if you do need to hit, it is best to only do it once, and make it count."

**ii.**

Isaak's mother is a liar.

He doesn't think anyone else knows that. She is a very good liar. Isaak is terrible at it, but he is very good at watching, and whatever his mother is, she is not a peasant girl from the edges of Tsibeya. Her movements are too careful, her posture too straight. There isn't a woman in their village who walks like Isaak's mother does, as though she were the first Alina, Ravka's lost queen.

...He can't deny that he considers that, once or twice. The words Os Alta do come up, late in the evening when she thinks he is asleep and that it is safe to speak to her shadows. Peasant girls from the edges of Tsibeya don't speak so casually of Ravka's capitol, as though it were just the village down the road.

And wouldn't that be something? To be a long lost prince, for his mother to be restored to a place where her strangeness would hold no meaning, for who would dare criticise the _tsaritsa_? He would never have chores again, he knows that much.

It is only when he considers who that would make his father, that he drops the idea. The Darkling's peace has stretched on into infinity, but that is not because the Darkling is a peaceful man.

"Fear is a strange beast," Isaak's mother tells him one night. "At times, people will hold back because of it. Like Ravka's enemies. Other times, fear makes people strike out. They take action in the hopes that action won't be taken against them."

"But how do they know anything will even happened?"

She smiles down at him, pressing a kiss to his forehead. "They don't, _zvyozdochka._ That is what makes it fear."

_Little star_. He's getting too old for pet names, he thinks, but that's the only one he doesn't bristle at.

**iii.**

Isaak suspects the voices are real.

Or, voice. Singular. He has only ever heard one name slip from between his mother's teeth, heavy with a weight he doesn't think it deserves.

_Aleksander_. It is an Alina of names. It could be anyone, any thing.

"You aren't as patient as you claim you are," she tells the sheets, hanging them out to dry.

"Don't ask that like you care about the answer," she chides a chicken, as she attempts to chase it back into the coop.

"I was made for myself." The wind whistles its response, and she sighs. "Of course I do, Aleksander. You're not a stupid man. Stop making things up to be dramatic about."

She catches Isaak lingering at times, and always has a smile for him. He notices, though, that she never touches him during these episodes. He had tried to hug her, once, and the way she had backed away from him in terror is burned into his mind.

He makes sure to wait, now, until he is certain that whatever it is that haunts her has disappeared. He always knows, somehow, and she is always happy to receive him.

Isaak's mother is warm, always, smells of sun-baked earth and whatever abortive attempt at cooking she has tried most recently. "Is it my father?" he asks her stomach one day. He is small for his age, and can't reach higher. "That you talk to?"

For a second, she stills. And then her fingers sweep back through his hair, brushing the brown locks off his forehead.

"When the time comes," she says softly, "I will tell you."

He's pretty sure that means yes.

**iv.**

Isaak is a sickly child.

It isn't that surprising. His mother tries to hide it, and most people can't tell, but her health is just as poor. It's only in the dark that it starts to show on her face, dark circles bruising themselves under her eyes, the hollows of her cheeks digging sharply into her face.

The strangest part is that she looks younger in those moments, as though a million fine lines of age have been wiped away, drawn back in sickness and exhaustion. It's only in the light that his mother looks like the other mothers, weather-worn and old before her time.

"You're looking haggard yourself," he hears her dry tone telling the shadows, and imagines they chuckle in response.

He helps her as best he can, but the truth is that there are times when Isaak is too breathless to do more than walk sedately behind her, too weak to lift anything heavier than his head. He catches things easily too, colds and bugs and other childhood nuisances that seem to stick with him far longer than the other children.

"I'm sorry." He thinks he hears her whisper the words one winter, when he is nearly delirious with fever. There's a wetness, cool on his burning cheek, and his sluggish brain takes a long time to register that she is crying. "Forgive me, _zvyozdochka_."

His hand wavers, floating above him and smacking into her face as he tries to reassure her. "You didn't make me sick, _mama_."

It's possible that she had responded, and he had simply passed out or otherwise forgotten. But Isaak is mostly certain that she remained silent.

**v.**

Isaak is fourteen, when the truth tears itself open.

He's out by the river, lying on the bank and soaking in the sun like a cat, or his mother. The grass has grown long, enough to hide his slight form from people not paying close enough attention.

Big boys tormenting little girls seldom pay close attention. Isaak hears her crying before their taunts, lifts his head to see if he can help. They have her doll, and are throwing it back and forth over her head, pitching their voices in a mocking falsetto to echo her pleading.

Isaak doesn't hesitate, scrambling to his feet. His breath rattles in his chest a bit, but that doesn't stop him from shouting over at them. "Hey! Leave her alone!"

They laugh at that. He can't really blame them. If he were a jerk with no brains, he'd probably laugh at the sight of his frail body standing against them, too.

_Never hit first._ He promised his mother, but there are ways around promises. Isaak keeps mostly to himself, but it's not hard to make people want to punch him.

"I mean, if you want a doll that bad, the seamstress can make one up for you," he points out, and smirks at them. He's not sure if it's the shit-eating expression, or if their masculinity is really that delicate, but it works. The doll hits the ground, and so does his body a few seconds later as they launch themselves at him.

He knows how to hit back. He _does_. But his body now isn't much stronger than it was when his mother first taught him how, and these boys are no playground bullies. A fist crashes into his face, and he spits insults back instead as they take his arms and pin him down.

"No one can make you hopeless except yourself," his mother had told him, late one spring evening. The sullen twilight had played strangely over her face, making her seem both young and ancient at the same time. "They'll try. But you are a strong boy. Keep faith in yourself, and no one can take it from you."

He thinks of that now, as pain explodes along his torso. It gets his forehead too, but only because he headbutts one of the jerks. His mother hadn't only taught him how to punch.

It would have ended up fine, he thinks later, if they hadn't given up talking shit about him and started on her.

Everyone in the village has always known his berserk button, the thing that turns quiet, pleasant, sickly Isaak into loud, irate, sickly Isaak. As the rest of the children got bigger and stronger while he didn't, his ability to make them shut the fuck up had sharply decreased.

Most people are kind to his mother. If they don't respect her for her strangely fitting words of wisdom, they at least pity her as something like a madwoman, someone to be indulged and treated gently.

There are some few, though, who hate her. Their words roll off his mother like water from a duck's back, and that only makes them hate her more.

"How do you bear it?" he had asked her once, and received a faint smile in return.

"What can their words do to me?" One of her hands had reached absently for her shoulder, like there was an old pain there. "It's only hot air, Isaak. If they want to waste their breath on it, they're welcome to."

It's a nice sentiment, but Isaak had never quite picked up on it. So when the words _crazy bitch of a mother_ plow into him with more another fist to the gut, he sees red. His body bucks, straining to get free, to make them take it back, to do _anything-_

And then he sees black.

**vi.**

Isaak is convinced, for a moment, that they knocked him out.

And then the screams start.

The pressure on his arms and chest releases, the sound of fearful scrambling overcoming the rush of the nearby river for a moment. One boy yelps, the other whimpers, and as neither of them manage to find an explanation for what is happening, the cries of terror race from their mouths.

Isaak stares at nothing, panting harshly, because there is only nothing to be seen. And it's not just the pressure on his arms and chest that is gone with the village boys. He feels _light_, like he has only been able to imagine since he was a toddler. He feels as though he could stand up now, despite the beating he took, and run. Just run, for who knows how long.

The _crack _that splits the air is almost as deafening as the blindness that follows. It's not like the nothing of before, but instead sharp and hot and bright. If he had thought he was unconscious in the dark, in the light he is sure he is dead.

And then his mother is there, her grip so tight that he can feel even her blunt nails draw blood.

But she is not his mother as Isaak has known her. The red of her hair has washed away into white, and she is young now, the lines of exhaustion in her face and her body drawn into something stronger, harder.

"What happened?" she demands, and her voice brooks no opposition.

"Th-" he starts, before realising he has no clue how to end that sentence.

"_Isaak_."

There is desperation in her tone that forces words out of his mouth anyway.

"They were insulting you!" he stammers. "And then it was dark everywhere, and I don't know what happened, _mama_."

The last two syllables strike her visibly. Isaak watches the light die, softening her edges, making her human again. He waits for the red to return to her hair, for her to stop looking only a few years older than him, but that doesn't happen.

The woman before him is a stranger.

**vii.**

Isaak's mother does not exist.

Alina Morevna is a phantom, something that only exists when people believe in her. Isaak feels his fingers curling into his palms with a strength he doesn't remember having ever possessed as he watches this new woman pack, quick and efficient.

No one had approached them. The paths through the village were almost empty, and the people who did see them shrank away, as though they could make themselves so small that they would not be seen themselves. His mother has always had a proud edge to her walk, but now she _strides_, in a way that suggests that if the ground were to fall away beneath her feet, she would continue going.

She packs in the same way, finally letting go of Isaak's wrist. It takes him a while to find his voice again.

"What are you doing?"

"Packing." The faintest hint of a pause. "We're leaving, _zvyozdochka_."

"Don't call me that!" he snaps. He doesn't know why the diminutive bothers him so much now. Maybe because it is a name that belongs to a warm, tired, amused woman. Something hollow eats away at his gut. "And I'm not going anywhere until you explain what is going on!"

She pauses then, fingers halting in the space between one breath and the next. And then she is tugging something out of a backpack, one he has never seen before. Light spills across the floor in a million dizzying pieces, and he realises that she is tugging some sort of gloves on.

They're covered in mirrors.

"...Who are you?"

She looks at him, and he thinks he sees a hint of the person that he knows. "I am your mother."

"No!" The hollow in his gut yawns wider when he says that, but he can't seem to help himself. "My mother is Alina Morevna! She is strange and quiet most of the time, and she can't cook or paint but she tries anyway, and she is sick sometimes, and she is _warm_. She can't summon light!"

Apparently done with packing, she shrugs a pack onto her back. There is another one there, waiting for him. Brown eyes meet grey, hard resolution doing battle with fear and confusion.

"I am still all of those things." She reaches out one gloved hand to cup his jaw, but he jerks his head angrily away. "And you, Isaak, will do any number of horrible and wonderful things in your life. And after every one of them, I will still be your mother."

_Any number of horrible and wonderful things_.

For a moment, it doesn't make sense. Isaak has no plans for the things he will or will not do. He expects to stay in the village for the rest of his life, to make a living in some fashion, to grow old and to die. The thought doesn't bother him - such is the way of most villagers.

He is looking at her hands as he tries to puzzle through the situation, to make it make sense. That's when he sees it; a golden cuff encircling her wrist, an object that must be beyond price, and something that Isaak has never seen before.

An awful understanding kindles in the back of his mind. He drags his gaze up, up, until he reaches her throat. A pair of antlers lie there, where nothing had been before.

Up again, until their eyes meet once more. And now there is fear in her face, too.

"_Sol Koroleva_," he mutters.

She turns away.

"We have to go. Now. I will explain everything on the way."

**viii.**

Isaak's mother is a liar.

* * *

><p><em>Thank you to everyone who has reviewedfavourited/followed so far! To the one anon who asked, I'm still working on Good Morning Midnight, this is just something that was supposed to be a oneshot but ended up not being. I hope you all like this story so far! The next (and last) chapter will be from the point of view of the Darkling._


	3. Chapter 3

**i.**

The boy is fourteen.

Intellectually, he knows this. He knows down to the day exactly how long it has been since Alina left him. It would have been the hour, but she had snuck away in the night, leaving him to wake up confused and alone.

But the only time Alina has allowed him to see the boy had been when he was an infant, and she had insisted on cradling it all the time. That had stopped once the boy could walk, or around that time, and he had been grateful.

He only tugs on their tether to see his wife. Any shadowy shape in the background is at best, an unnecessary distraction. At worst, it is the thing that tore them apart. Again.

So knowing that the boy is fourteen, and seeing the slight form that is very clearly not an infant, are two very different things.

**ii.**

He feels the shadows, of course. He is ancient, too deeply connected to Ravka and the dark places within it not to feel a new shadow staining the land.

His first instinct is to tear a new army from his soul and neutralise the threat. It subsides, however, cool logic eating away at the emotion almost immediately. The _nichevo'ya_ are a cudgel - effective, against an opponent weakened by terror, but blunt. The weight of centuries have ensured that terror is no longer a useful tool when it comes to Alina.

It makes for an interesting marriage. At least, it had, until she had left to construct a new weapon against him.

He does leave, eventually. But he does it on horseback, alone, after arranging appropriate measures for the caretaking of the country.

That grates on him. It's necessary, but he has seen what Ravka had become without him - him and Alina - at its helm. Toleave it for even as short a time as he expects this to take, sits uneasily with him.

He considers reaching out to Alina again, pointing this out to her. But she has clamped down on their connection again. Not severed it, of course. Even Alina isn't that cruel. But when he feels along the tether that ties them together, he hits a brick wall before he gets to her. He could have smashed through it without trouble, but…

His wife might not be _that_ cruel. It does not mean she has no cruelty in her at all. The past fourteen years and more have proven that, just as she has proven that the wellbeing of Ravka does not mean as much to her as it does to him.

When he sees her again, he will remind her.

**iii.**

The boy sulks.

It's pathetic, he thinks, and wonders if he has perhaps overestimated Alina's ability to control this situation. His wife has a tendency to cloud his thoughts at the best of times, after all, and the centuries have done nothing to change that.

Possibly, in focusing on what she had done, he has given her too much credit for what she was doing. Tracking them silently through the woods, he notes the sickly pallor to the boy's skin, the dark circles that speak of illness and a lack of sleep.

And a lack of power.

Surprise pricks at him over that, too. He isn't stupid. The power is there; he follows the thrum of it through the very air. But after what Alina had done to herself, so many years ago now, he finds it difficult to imagine that she would require her boy to suppress his own powers. Put off as he might be with the whole concept, he's still aware that she...cares for the boy. Hiding abilities, he understands. Cutting them off completely, he never will.

The hole in his heart that had once held his mother gnaws itself a little wider, and he feels his jaw flex, teeth aching with sudden pressure. Those are memories he neither needs nor wants, and he can't help but mark another transgression against Alina for bringing them up.

That might be a _little _irrational, but after being abandoned by this woman for the umpteenth time, he feels that he's entitled to some emotion.

**iv.**

"You should have told me."

It takes him a week at least to hunt them down (a disgustingly simple endeavour, after spending so many years searching fruitlessly). An additional two days are spent following them, gathering information. In that time, the boy does little and speaks less. Not much is learned about him, except that he is sullen, ungrateful, and clearly has no appreciation for the woman who is his mother.

"Which part, _zvyozdochka?_"

His lip curls at the nickname, even as he sees the boy's jaw tighten. He does not notice the similarities in their facial structure.

"I told you-"

"I know."

The curl twists into a smirk at the cool tone to her voice. It is the voice of a woman who does not back down. Ever. He is achingly familiar with that one.

"I know," she continues, "what you told me. But as we have agreed that I am still your mother, no matter the colour of my hair, I will call you what I wish. It is a mother's prerogative."

_A mother_.

The word seems almost alien to him. There is only one thing that comes to mind when he thinks of it, and he has no wish to think of it. Looking at Alina now, in person finally, instead of the shade he has hunted for years, he sees his wife. He does not see a mother.

He does not want to.

**v.**

At first, he is pleased that Alina does not seem to notice his presence. It would hinder his information gathering, after all, if she picked up on it. It would force them to some sort of conclusion, and he hasn't entirely decided on his course of action as of yet.

But a day passes, two, and he begins to wonder. Why hasn't she noticed him? She has clamped down on their connection, yes, the first and foremost indicator of his presence. But she had done that so he wouldn't find her. Shouldn't she then be hyper-aware of the possibility that he would?

Why isn't she waiting for him?

Once his mind leads him down the path, it isn't too difficult to find the answer. For a brief second, naked hatred flickers through him as he stares at the boy, although he can only see the back of his head. His wife focusses on the face in moments, instants, careful not to seem like she is staring herself. Careful not to seem as though all of her formidable attention is narrowed on the boy.

But he knows her tells, has them engraved into his very being. Perhaps she can succeed in lying to him on occasion, but she does not realise he is there, and so feels no reason to hide them. She is consumed by the boy in front of her, this ignorant, idiot nobody, who doesn't deserve the massive power that has been graced him by sheer luck alone.

He almost reveals himself, puts an end to it there. Alina does not forgive, and she does not forget. He will have to endure more years without her, no doubt, until she wears herself down to nothing. But if he endures them alone, so will she. And so she will return to him in the end, as she always does.

He had a mother, once. Now, there is only Alina. And it is only fair that Alina has only him.

**vi.**

But then she speaks.

**vii.**

"I kept you ignorant," she says softly. "So ignorant, I'm not sure how to explain to you what you want to know. If I'm honest, Isaak, I don't want to tell you. I want to run with you and keep going until we reach some part of the world that he - that _Ravka_ has not touched."

There are no such places. Ravka is not the whole world, but there is no place over the centuries that they have not touched. He notes the way she does not say 'they', though, and his fingers twitch.

"Was it a test?" The boy's voice is small. Pathetic, like the rest of him. "Was I supposed to do something? Prove that I was worthy of - of being - whatever it is you wanted me to be?"

Alina leans forward without hesitation, calloused fingers cupping the boy's cheeks. "You are everything I wanted you to be."

_That_ pricks his interest. Because there has to be a reason, after all. Why, after hundreds of years, Alina would have allowed this to happen. She had wanted something, and now that she has allowed the boy to manifest his powers, that something must be realised.

"What does that mean?" the boy whispers.

"It means you are kind, Isaak. Thoughtful. You aren't afraid to defend yourself, but you don't needlessly provoke others, either." Her thumb moves over his cheek, and she sighs. "And you are without ambition."

_Without…?_

The boy snorts. "That's not something most mothers hope for in their children, _mama_."

"Most children do not have your father."

A picture begins to form in his mind, separate and distinct from the assumptions he has long held about the birth of this child. He has to resist the urge to tug on the tether binding him to his wife, to check with her, to demand answers from her. He has demanded answers from her since she left him, and to no avail.

So he stays where he is, and listens.

"My father," the boy echoes. "The...king."

Alina draws her hand away. She inhabits the silence between them; the boy might not be able to tell, but _he_ can sense her every deliberation, the weight she lends to every moment as she considers it, considers her words, considers at what precise point she ought to open her mouth.

And he knows what it is she will say next. His own mouth opens, a protest forming on his lips despite himself, but she has timed it perfectly.

"His name," she says heavily, "is Aleksander Morozova."

**viii.**

There's no staying hidden after that. Aleksander doesn't even stop to think about it, unfolding his body from the shadows and stepping out into the clearing they have made camp in.

The boy, unsurprisingly deaf to his movements, doesn't even turn around.

"That name was not yours to give," he tells her, and the evening air draws tighter around them all.

From the corner of his gaze, he can see the boy start violently, but he pays it no mind. He has eyes only for his wife, sitting calm and cross-legged in a peasant's dress, with her hands in her lap. Beautiful, despite everything.

"I grew tired of waiting for you to join us," she says simply, and anyone else might have thought her unafraid. But Aleksander can see the defiant lift to her jaw, the way her eyes flicker to her son. "And here I thought that what's yours is mine."

He steps around her, not touching her. Not yet. Some of the darkness clings to him as he circles her, taking in every inch of what he has not seen in too long.

"Can a man consider a woman his wife if she leaves him for nearly fifteen years?"

"The paper doesn't dissolve because it isn't within my reach."

He chuckles, low and amused. Despite the circumstances, despite everything, he is glad to be here. To be so close again. There is still the matter of the boy to be dealt with, but Aleksander ignores that for now, indulging himself with a light touch. His fingers brush against the pallor of her cheek, and he doesn't imagine the faint way she leans into it, even as her fingers curl in her lap. Power surges between them, ancient and familiar.

"Ours was not just a paper marriage," he reminds her.

Fingers curl around his wrist, tugging it away. But she does not let go of it, so he considers it a victory. "Aleksander."

Her eyes flicker again to the boy, and he feels that abrupt surge of hatred rush through him again, It has been centuries since she cared enough about anyone else to give it away like that. He feels her fingernails dig into soft flesh as the emotion hits her, feels her own wave of terror rise up to meet it.

"What?" He pitches his voice caring, concerned, even as he steps deliberately between the boy and her line of sight. "Afraid that he'll see you as you really are, Alina?"

"Stop it!"

Aleksander doesn't even glance over his shoulder at the boy. He can see it without looking; no doubt there will be hands clenched into fists and flashing brown eyes, a jaw lifted in the same way as the woman before him.

Aleksander doesn't need the reminder. He tosses his free hand out lazily, a thread of shadow snaking towards the boy. And that is when Alina moves.

**ix.**

He's _missed_ this. The light flares bright between them, enough to blind him, but he has never needed to see to know where she is. Curious to know what she will do, he lets her pull him off balance, compliant.

The faint breeze caused by an arm swinging down makes his eyebrows raise, even as he feels the surge of her power drawing on him. Her Cut devastates a swath of forest before them, not incidentally severing the thread of shadow that had been reaching for the boy.

"I knew you would misunderstand," she snarls. He expects her to stop then, but she doesn't; her next Cut gives him enough time to wrest his arm from her grip, but only just. The heat of it as it flies past him is enough to sting.

"You've had fifteen years to explain," he points out, and feels a sneer crack across his face at the sight of her pushing the boy behind her. He hears the _boom_ of his own power before he even realises that he has clapped his hands together.

"Isaak, run."

His wife's face is drawn, but flushed. The white of her hair floats in a halo around her from the sheer force of the heat wisping off her body. The boy remains behind her, and Aleksander does not bother checking for his reaction.

Alina in the grip of her power is an all-consuming sort of sight.

"_Mama_, no. _No_, I won't leave you here with him!"

Brave and stupid. The son of an Alina from another age, another universe in which she never joined him, in which-

The word _tracker_ drifts across his mind, and Aleksander brings his arm down in a sharp Cut.

The world turns white around them, and he laughs as the very fabric of his shadows dissipate into nothing before the Cut reaches them.

"Does it feel good, Alina?" he calls, satisfaction in his voice. "Feeling it running through your veins again, singing in your nerves, all of that power? Yours _and_ mine. Everything you gave up for this scrap of child, back in the palm of your hand."

"Isaak, if you love me, you will run." Alina's chest rises and falls, and they aren't touching but he can feel her fear from this distance. Disgust and loathing make something slick stir in the pit of his soul, something long untouched, but not forgotten.

"But-"

"They do not call me _Sol Koroleva _for nothing, _zvyozdochka_, now _**go!**_"

He has heard that roar before. From his Alina, on battlefields, when facing whole armies. But there had been no fear then, either.

This is new, and Aleksander decides that he hates it.

He has grown used to not being her villain.

**x.**

The boy runs. One does not refuse the Sun Queen.

**xi.**

Aleksander thinks for a moment of giving chase. But he has not yet reached a decision on what to do about the boy, so he leaves it for the time being.

Well, for that reason, and for the fact that Alina brings both of her arms down this time, two Cuts covering the boy's retreat.

"What's the matter, Alina?" he croons, his body avoiding one, a fist of his power coming up to smother the other. "Is his training not complete? Did that accident the other day ruin your plans for him?"

"Not in the way you're thinking." Bright bursts of light explode around his head. "He's not your replacement, Aleksander."

He shuts his eyes against the light and feels for her instead, retaliating with his own twisting of shadows. It doesn't blind, but disorients; he plays on the imagination, on the fear of what might be hiding in the dark. And inside him, he feels the stirring of _merzost _for the first time in an age.

He has to win, after all. Has to show her that she was wrong to leave him, wrong to turn their lives inside out like this. Wrong to have a son, with his face and his power.

"Then why leave?" he counters, and Cuts again. "Why hide, why spend so many years ensuring I could not see him to know what he looks like? My own _son_."

"Don't say that like it means anything to you." Her own hands clap together, and a wave of heat billows towards him. He feels the sweat break out on his forehead and ignores it, wraps the fast falling night around himself like a cloak for protection. "And don't treat me like an idiot. We both know that if I had stayed, if you had acknowledged him, Ravka's heir would have had an _accident_ within the first few months of life."

He sneers, and his own wave for blackness roils towards her, seeking, consuming. He will eat her heat, her light, take every part of her back into himself until they are together again, until she is a part of him once more. "Children are such fragile creatures."

The succession of Cuts that tear through even this blanket of shadows takes him by surprise. They were playing before, but there is no provision in her manoeuvres now for his escape. She expects him to defend himself or die trying, and for a half second he considers backing down.

But only half a second.

"_I _suppressed his power!" Her voice cracks over the _whoosh_ of her offensive, sharp pants punctuating her words. "I know you've been watching us. Tell me you see a threat to your power when you see him, and I will _know_ you're lying. He isn't trained, he has no dreams of being greater than what he is-"

The snarl splits his face before he can control it. He can hear his blood surge in his ears, the power in his veins, and the scratch of old claws digging into ancient wounds. There is no stopping it now, and he doesn't want to. Aleksander tears into his very soul and rips out a soldier of pure darkness.

"_What he is is already greater than any other human has a right to be_." The _nichevo'ya_ erupt from him in a cloud of blackness, and he thrusts them towards her blindly. If he can't make her see with love, then he will do it with pain.

And then he really is blind, as a deafening screech pulls the very air into pieces. The pull of Alina's power echoes inside him, and then her soldiers of light spill from her fingers, forming a line of defence between her and the _nichevo'ya_.

The skittering, clacking sound of his summons combines with the hum of hers, filling the silence between them until there is no silence, but a cacophony.

"I knew a girl," he says, and his voice is low, and it carries across the distance anyway, "who wasn't trained, and had no dreams of greatness. Not until the right person found her, and taught her to imagine something more."

"Isaak isn't me," she replies. Just as quiet, just as careful. "And he is not you, and I am not Baghra. I haven't whispered words of power into his ear at night, I haven't told him he is destined to lead, I haven't promised him the world. He will only have a reason to overthrow you if you _give_ him one."

A humourless smile stole his face. "Alina." Just her name, chiding, as though she is seventeen again and him still ancient. "Do you think I will not?"

It's in his nature.

"And even," he continues, because this is a battle of words as much as wills and power, "if I refrained? If I let him be, and if he found no fault in me to follow in your footsteps for, what kind of life would he have? You had seventeen years of being alone, Alina. I can assure you, it was nothing compared to centuries. You think you have suffered, in your long life so far, but you have not known true pain. Not like I did. Not like he will."

His shadows against her light cast crazed patterns throughout the clearing, and they dance over her face, making her features impossible to read. Even for him.

But Aleksander doesn't need to see his wife's face to know her nature. She loves too much, whether the recipients of her love deserve it or not. It's one of the few things she has proven him wrong about, in time; he had thought it would take her eighty, maybe ninety years to lose that tendency.

Yet here they are. He presses on, digging his fingers into that weakness and prying it open, pouring in an age of pain that he will never allow her to have. They have done terrible things to each other, over the years, but Aleksander will not leave Alina Starkov alone.

"There are no others like us," he whispers to her. "But we, at least, have each other. He will have no one. It's a fate worse than death, Alina. Don't leave him to it."

For a moment, nothing happens. But Aleksander waits, confident, because she has to see. She _has_ to.

Finally, she lifts a hand, clenches it. The soldiers of light dissipate, and Aleksander draws the _nichevo'ya_ back into him with a sigh of relief, smiling. It's instinct to step towards her, to cross the distance between them, but her arm doesn't come down.

Aleksander stops short. The glow of a Cut wobbles along the edge of her hand, not yet released. His wife's chin lifts in that defiant way of hers, as she sets it against her own throat.

**xii.**

"I am not Baghra," she says evenly. "But we have some things in common. I am not afraid to die for my son. And you will swear to me that you will let him live his life - however long and painful that may end up being - or I will return you to the agony of solitude here and now."

**xiii.**

He stops.

**xiv.**

"Alina-"

Her name chokes him. He reaches for her, not with his power but with his hand, desperate to pull hers away. But she steps back, out of his reach, and for some reason he can't force himself to follow.

It's the look in her eyes. No one can turn brown into a cold colour like his wife, and yet this is new even for her. He could cut himself on that gaze.

"_Madraya_?"

Alina closes her eyes, as if shielding herself against some attack. The boy steps back into view; after a moment, steps between his mother and the Darkling.

"What did you do to her?" he demands. "Why is she doing that?"

The boy's fists are clenched, and yes, there is the chin lifting. But in the wavering light cast by Alina's power, Aleksander can see that the eyes spitting fire at him are not brown after all.

"I asked you to leave, Isaak," Alina says softly, and there is something broken in her voice, something that Aleksander does not understand.

"The noises stopped. I was _worried_." The boy twists his head, looking over his shoulder like he doesn't realise just how dangerous turning his back on the Darkling is. "It's okay, _mama_. I'll make him stop. I don't know how, but I will."

Alina's eyes open again, but it is Aleksander she looks at, not her son. Their gazes meet over the boy's head, and he can see that her hand doesn't tremble even a hair's breadth.

_I will return you to the agony of eternal solitude_.

"I swear it," he says abruptly, and even he can't tell if the disgust in his voice is directed at her, or himself, or the boy in between them. "Put your hand down, Alina, I swear it."

Her hand stays where it is, long enough to make a fine tip on her point. And then finally, finally, she lets it drop, and Aleksander remembers how to breathe.

His oath is tested almost immediately as the boy launches himself at him with a low cry, but Alina lunges after her son, catching him around the waist.

"Remember what I told you about getting into fights," she says fiercely, even as he struggles to escape her.

One gangly arm flies out, gesturing at the clearing. Idly, Aleksander looks around, noting that the devastation is about typical for a fight between him and his wife. "You don't think that this counts as hitting first!?"

"He did not hit _you_ first," Alina points out, holding tightly. "And I am safe, _zvyozdochka_. I can assure you that, no matter what you have seen here tonight, I have always been completely safe."

She's right, Aleksander thinks bitterly. And it's not because she had been unwilling to carry out her threat. He can feel her resolve as certainly as he feels his own power; if he harms the boy, she will leave him, and it will be permanent this time.

No, she is safe because he will not bear that. And so she can wring whatever promise she likes out of him with ten words, and remain that way.

The boy relaxes in inches, until he finally relaxes enough that Alina feels she can let him go. Rather than launching himself at Aleksander again, he turns and throws himself at his mother, clinging tightly to her. Alina's arms come up almost immediately, and her grasp on the boy is just as tight, just as desperate.

"You have," the boy mutters, as Aleksander slips silently back into the shadows, "a terrible taste in men."

**xv.**

It takes three months for his wife to return to Os Alta.

Aleksander sits in his study, sprawled in his chair, watching the candle on his desk sputter in the breeze from the open window. A nearby clock tells him that he may as well stay up the rest of the night, for how much is left of it.

The door creaks open, sending the light skittering wildly around the room. There is only one person it could possibly be, but Aleksander does not turn around. Just in case it is, just in case it is not.

"I missed this," the Queen sighs, and the sound of a travelling cloak crumpling to the floor whispers towards him.

"You could have had this whenever you wanted," Aleksander reminds his desk, and bitterness lines every letter of his words.

"Are you going to waste my homecoming rehashing conversation we've already had, Aleksander?" Light fingers run over his shoulder, down over his chest, and he catches the glitter of the seawhip's scales even in this dim light.

Slowly, half-convinced this is still just a visitation, he reaches up to wrap her fingers with his. There is a faint pause from both of them, and then she squeezes his hand.

His chair hits the floor as he stands, dragging her towards him, crushing her body flush against his. And she has the temerity to _smirk_ at him, even as her free hand wraps around his waist, keeping him close.

"The boy?" he asks, and he _hates_ that he has to ask about this child of theirs, that he must open his life with Alina to this interloper.

And yet. He still asks, because there is some small part of him that can't deny curiosity, even as the rest of him insists on apathy.

"Installed in the Little Palace, with the rest of the students." Her fingers trace idle patterns on the small of his back, like she has been gone a few weeks, instead of a short lifetime. "He wants to remain anonymous, for the time being."

Aleksander snorts. "And how does he plan to do that? It's not as though he is some common Tidemaker."

The smirk doesn't go away, even as his wife extricates her wrist from his grasp so she can lay her fingers on his cheek. "Ask him yourself."

His lip curls automatically, but then her mouth is there to distract him, the kiss harsh and demanding. He doesn't hesitate in picking her up, tugging her legs around his hips. The candle sputters out as it hits the ground along with the rest of whatever was on his desk; he's sure it was important, but he would gladly watch it burn if it got him closer to his wife even a second sooner.

The hard edge of the wood presses against his thighs as he sets her down on it, as he revels in her low chuckle, the taste of her, the feel. Their clothes join her cloak on the ground as he reminds her, in excruciating detail, of just what else she missed.

He'll have to deal with the boy at some point. But later.

Much later.

* * *

><p><em>And that's that! I hope this chapter answered any questions y'all had, and i doubly hoped that you enjoyed it c: Thanks for reading!<em>


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